


Home Is Where The Heart Is

by Cozy_coffee



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Blind Dean, Brotherly Love, Caretaking, Community: comment_fic, Family Feels, Family Fluff, Friendship/Love, Hurt Dean Winchester, M/M, Sam Takes Care Of Dean, Tenderness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-17
Updated: 2017-06-17
Packaged: 2018-04-11 23:14:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4456229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cozy_coffee/pseuds/Cozy_coffee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A fill for the comment fic prompt; Any, any, I'm standing in the ashes of who I used to be, but I'm faded away, you know I used to be on fire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Home Is Where The Heart Is

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Catherines_Collections](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catherines_Collections/gifts).



It wasn’t easy. But then again, nothing about their lives ever was. 

Dean Winchester was a determined man; when he set his mind to something he kept at it until he completed the task. This was gonna be no different. The chair scraped against the floor as Dean dragged it closer to the desk. Reaching out, he felt around for the book he left sitting there the night before. His hands found it and Dean opened the book to the page he had earmarked. He slowly ran his fingers along the paper, feeling the tiny bumps lining the pages, each one different from the one before it. 

They jumped and twisted; each set spelling out a different word; together all the bumps formed a sentence. Dean had to touch all the small bumps a few times over because he couldn’t understand some of the words; He was trying to learn Braille and he was doing well but he still struggled on account of his fingers having thick calluses. 

Years of handling guns, working on the engine of his baby, and occasionally burning his fingers had left his fingertips too rough for comfortable Braille reading. The skin wasn’t smooth and it was blemished with past wounds, which made it difficult to feel the bumps on the pages for what they were. But Dean refused to give up; he may be blind but he wasn’t a quitter. 

Sam watched Dean from the kitchen, but he couldn’t look too closely at his brother’s face—it still hurt way too much. Dean’s face was scarred by three jagged, deep scratches, all of them trailing from his forehead, across his face and over his eyes, down to his cheek. Dean had been blinded by a black dog on a hunt and he lost his sight when the beast’s claw cut across his eyes. There had been more life threatening injuries; it was a miracle Dean didn’t die. 

His will to live was strong and he refused to let what happen to him, stop him from living his life. There were daily challenges that Dean learned to accept and overcome, and as time passed, the brothers took it one day at a time; one obstacle at a time. It had been a hard road but they traveled it together. 

By now Dean had learned how to get around with a walking stick and he began to adapt to his new world. He would never hunt again or drive his baby, Sam was sure of that, but Dean still believed that one day he would. He still had hope, and Sam didn’t have the heart to crush his brother’s sprit. For now, Dean’s hunting was restricted to learning the words of the bumpy pages before him.

Dean sat at the desk and let his fingers slowly trail over the words, his lips moving as he silently read. Sam could still see his brother laying in that hospital bed, his arms lying limp against the thin cotton blanket, the blue plastic ID bracelet wrapped around his bloody wrist, and the assortment of IV lines threading into him. 

He remembered laying his palm on Dean's chest, being cautious of the wounds, letting himself feel his brother’s heart still beating—letting him know Dean was still alive. He could still hear the doctors telling him that Dean wouldn’t make it through the night.  
They should never have underestimated a Winchester. 

“Hey, are you going to stand there staring at me like a freak or are you going to join me?” 

Dean’s amused voice pulled Sam out of his thoughts and he looked up to see his brother gazing in his direction, a small smile playing across his lips. Dean’s unseeing eyes were hidden behind the black glasses he wore but Sam could imagine those brightly green eyes shining back at him. 

Sam joined his brother and he reached out and smoothed Dean's spiky unruly hair back from his forehead. He wanted to take Dean’s blindness away and he would gladly trade places with his brother if he could. All he wanted was to comfort Dean. Dean was grateful for the care his brother had shown him over the past months and he would be lost if it wasn’t for Sam’s help. However, he still didn’t want a chick flick moment. 

“Alright, Samantha,” Dean teased as he swatted away Sam’s hand. “Stop fondling the merchandise.” 

Sam smirked, joyful to see that his brother’s sprits were still high. “How about some lunch, Dean? Are you hungry?” 

Dean nodded, and he said one word, “Pie.” 

Sam chuckled—he should have known. As he began to fix Dean a slice of pie, making sure to add whipped cream also, Dean went back to reading. Sam noticed that Dean’s fingers kept trailing the same sentence over and over again. He wondered what the sentence said but he didn’t ask; he didn’t want to bother Dean, certainly when his brother seemed set on reading and learning that one line. 

When Sam walked over and set the plate of pie down before he joined his brother at the table. Gently, he picked up Dean’s hand and placed the fork into it; usually he tried to let Dean do things first before he offered to help, but this time he found himself guiding Dean before he thought otherwise. To his surprise, Dean dropped the fork and put his hands back on the pages, still reading that same line over again. 

“Dean, aren’t you going to eat?” Sam asked. “It’s your favorite, apple pie.” He was a little concerned that Dean wasn’t devouring the delicious pie that was waiting for him. Dean always had an appetite for pie. 

“Just a second, Sammy, I want to finish this line.” Dean read the bumps over and over again, and Sam was starting to get curious as to what his brother was reading. He knew it was a challenge for Dean to read but he was making great headway; Dean had read to him a few times over the pasts few days. Surely he had understood what he was reading by now. 

Finally, Dean’s fingers stopped moving. He reached out and took Sam’s hand in his, and then he pressed Sam’s fingers over the sentence that the bumps formed. Sam hadn’t learned how to read Braille yet so he didn’t know what the words meant. But Dean was now smiling and it was clear that he understood the sentence. 

“What do they say, Dean?” Sam asked. 

Dean started at the first set of bumps and pressed Sam’s fingers against them, going all the way across the sentence as he read, “I…love…you…brother.” 

Sam’s eyes welled up with tears as the words sank in. Seconds later, Dean was hugging him, his brother’s head resting on his shoulder. Sam wrapped his arms around Dean and hugged him as the tears fell down his cheeks. They held onto one another, both of them clinging to each other, the only ones who had stuck by them during such a hellish time. One chick-flick moment never hurt anyone.

A few nights later Dean was lying on the bed in a pair of boxer shorts, enjoying a massage from his brother. His back still had knots in it as a result of him spending hours sitting hunched over in an uncomfortable chair. Dean felt a soft tapping on his back and for a moment he wasn’t sure what Sam was doing but then he focused on the sensation. 

Sam pressed little dots to his back with his fingertips and it took Dean a moment to realize what his brother was doing. When Sam did it for a third time Dean grinned.  
Sam was dotting out the sentence Dean had showed him. ‘I love you.’

Dean reached back and tapped on Sam’s leg as he smiled brightly. ‘I love you.’

♥ END ♥

**Author's Note:**

> Beta: tattooeddevil
> 
> [Written for this prompt!](http://comment-fic.livejournal.com/825663.html?thread=103943231#t103943231)


End file.
